A 15-step walking tour of Thoreau's Walden Pond

By Chris Bergeron Correspondent

Wednesday

Feb 21, 2018 at 2:54 PMFeb 21, 2018 at 8:05 PM

Henry David Thoreau can be your “silent companion at every step’’ of your next visit to Walden Pond thanks to Robert M. Thorson’s groundbreaking new guidebook to one of New England’s most iconic natural landmarks.

In “The Guide to Walden Pond,” the geologist, naturalist and intrepid hiker has written the first step-by-step trail guide to help visitors see and experience the Bay State’s most famous kettle pond through the eyes and, indeed, the soul of the visionary author who spent two years in the 1840s living in the surrounding woods.

Combining his scientific and scholarly expertise, Thorson provides a 15-stop tour that brings visitors face-to-face with Walden’s place in a complex ecosystem and the geology that has shaped the site, the region and its character.

Divided into four geographic sections, each of the stops, such as “Thoreau’s Cove,” begins with a tone-setting “Sense of Place” statement and includes quotes from “Walden” pertaining to that area, photographs that show it today and helpful maps and drawings.

Some other stops include Bare Peak, Wyman Meadow and the Bean Field described in “Walden” but often overlooked by visitors.

Thorson devotes much of each section to chronicling Thoreau’s experiences in that place, citing what he wrote about it and how it reflects on his multifaceted identity as a naturalist, philosopher and man of his era.

Whether carried by casual visitors or hardcore trekkers, his guide book will become as invaluable as good hiking shoes to seeing Walden Pond as Thoreau lived it.

Coming near the close of Thoreau’s bicentennial year in July 2018, the guidebook will greatly enhance visitors’ experience of – in his words –“the actual outdoor place” of Walden Pond and its natural and man-made environs but also of the complex man who went there “to live deliberately (and) front only the essential facts of life.”

“I hope my book brings the pond alive for armchair and boots on the ground visitors,” said Thorson, a professor of geology at University of Connecticut since 1984. “ Writing it did so for me as an integrating experience, meaning Walden Pond is alive because its parts are interacting, the people, the plants, the animals, the industries, the landforms and the fluids.”

Subtitled “An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape and Literature of One of America’s Most Iconic Places,” the 272-page guidebook is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in collaboration with the Walden Woods Project (WWP) of Concord. It goes on sale March 13.

Jeffrey S. Cramer, who wrote extensively about Thoreau and edited his journals, described Thorson as “a great scholar who knows Walden Pond and related material very well.”

The curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods Library, he said Thorson’s knowledge of his natural and human subjects made it “a no-brainer” for the WWP to collaborate with him on this book.

“Thorson’s book helps explain what Walden Pond really is. Beyond that, he places it in a historical context and explains Thoreau’s experience of it so it all fits together,” said Cramer.

Like Thoreau, Thorson has spent significant parts of his life immersed in nature, closely studying the underlying geosystems of rock, water and air that shape the physical environment.

Born into a Scandinavian-American immigrant family, he lived during his adolescence in Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota and Minnesota often near kettle lakes formed by retreating glaciers. After earning advanced degrees in geology, Thorson worked as an exploration geologist in Alaska and spent five years working for the U.S. Geological Survey, personal experiences that inform his guidebook.

Three of his previous books,” Beyond Walden: The Hidden History of America’s Kettle Lakes and Ponds,” “Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth Century Science,” and “The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years,” provided fresh insights into Thoreau’s broad scientific interests and deep personal study of Walden Pond and the surrounding area as interrelated geological and environmental systems.

As a result, Thorson’s guidebook and research rescues Thoreau from a public image largely fashioned by English professors who focused on “Walden” as literature while paying insufficient attention to its author’s scientific observations.

Citing his experience as a geologist, Thorson said he included the Boulder Wall as the tour’s fourth stop between Walden beach and the wooded bank along the pond to emphasize Thoreau’s recognition of rock “which we can call reality.”

Thorson recently said Americans now need to understand Walden Pond as “a symbol of resilience” to the same kind of 21st century environmental threats from woodcutters, farmers and the railroad that Thoreau observed in the mid-1800s.

Thorson said he was “very much concerned” Walden Pond was in danger of becoming a tourist attraction rather than a living environment for meditation and nature studies.

Noting Walden Park is operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, he said the “very name” suggests incompatible goals that might benefit from a reevaluation of its founding deed in 1922 to create a public place specific to “the Walden of Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Asked what he would show President Trump on a tour of Walden, Thorson said he would point out Walden’s “indivisible system” of pond water, the aquifer, the air above and surrounding land “every moment …in conversation” with one another.

Thorson said in his bad moods he sometimes thinks of the current Walden Pond as possessed of a “split personality” in which only a swim, a walk through the woods and a visit to Thoreau’s reconstructed cabin by the parking lot matter to most visitors.

He wonders whether the DCR’s current organization emphasizes Thoreau’s political and philosophical interests while underplaying his observations of nature.

In his darker moods, Thorson sees the popular beach, often ignored woods and house site commemorated by hammered stone Thoreau detested as “synthetic” 20th century changes incompatible with the pond and woods he loved that balmed his soul.

“In good moods, the lake is preserved and is fortunately too resilient to be wrecked by Anthropocene ants, namely us,” said Thorson.

Despite his misgivings, Thorson stressed Thoreau’s “Walden” and his guide book are optimistic about the pond’s resilient capacity to endure.

“The most positive thing is I’ve squatted on the shore and fished in Walden and it’s still the same old pond no matter what we’ve done to it,” he said. “That’s a hopeful sign. For anyone bummed out about the environment, go to Walden.”

"The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape and Literature of One of America's Most Iconic Place" by Robert M. Thorson

On sale March 13

272 pages; $26 on paper over board; $16.99 paperback; also available as an eBook